Sponsored.  The nature category is incredibly popular in tabletop games (I’m looking at you, Harmonies, Forrest Shuffle, and Finspan) but designers David Gordon and TAM wanted to take this category to a grander scale—SPACE!  Of course, there are also a lot of amazing space games on the market, but they vastly lean into science-fiction and exploration, and focus a lot less on the natural elements of the universe.  Crafting the Cosmos seeks to bring players closer to the cosmos through scientific principles.

Players wield light, time, chemistry, and gravity to their advantage as they upgrade energy into power cards, increasing the number of resources gained in their energy phase while also opening the potential for powerful abilities such as Special Relativity, Ionizing Radiation, Speed of Light, and Solar Wind!  Some of these concepts may sound familiar to you; that's because they are derived from real scientific theories and natural phenomena.

With the help of a handful of wonderful scientists (Alyssa Barlis, Holly Gilbert, Lauren Woolsey, and Myles Heffernen), we turned our creative juices toward bringing the expansion of the universe to life (figuratively as well as literally)!  While crafting your own cosmos is by no means based in reality, we wanted the mechanics to be reminiscent of how the cosmos is scientifically theorized to have been created—this is why you'll find four different types of stars (each rich in their corresponding element) used to craft nebulae, life that spurs from other life, and even stars going supernova.

We'll be the first to admit, this is by no means an education-focused game.  It could be a lot of fun to switch things up in a science club or class, but it ultimately simplifies the related theories into playable mechanics.  Wouldn't it be fabulous to be able to just move a star to the other side of the cosmos on a whim?  In the game, all you need is a little gravity and a wish—with some clever placement, you'll be able to slingshot a star across the board to complete a nebula all the way across the universe!  Players are scored on their ability to manipulate the laws of physics to maximize their creation, which still ends up being a delightfully mathy puzzle.  Maybe we talked ourselves out of it… there is a lot to be learned from playing Crafting the Cosmos, I just wouldn’t expect a cosmology degree to come out of it.

If you like the sound of building your own universe from the vacuum of space, Crafting the Cosmos is worth checking out.  You'll get to move dark matter to make sure you get the resources you need to make your nebulae thrive, place stars and newly-formed life to try to maximize your own universe’s potential, race against the other players for a set of shared goals, and build an engine to make following turns even more exciting!  While players do compete for goals during the game, they don't hinder one another in any way, meaning that each player gets to really focus on building their own cosmos, working to get the most out of their tile placement as well as their actions in a unique and enjoyable space-themed experience!

Crafting the Cosmos is a game for two to four players, ages 14 and up, and runs 60-90 minutes in length.  It retails for $79.99 (USD).

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